How you sell, documented
The stages a deal goes through, what each one means, and who owns it. Everyone on the team works from the same page.
Fractional Sales Director, Derby | Nick Riggott, ARC Advisory
Helping businesses make sales revenue more predictable.
20+ years of complex B2B sales experience. Applied to give you more confidence in your sales.
What I Do
Start with how you sell today.
I start by understanding how your sales really work. How a deal gets from first conversation to signed, who decides what, and where things go quiet.
From there we work out what's getting in the way and what to do about it first. Sometimes that's a conversation and a few changes. Sometimes it's longer and I work alongside your team. It depends on what we find.
If you already have a sales leader, I work with them, not around them.
A pipeline you can trust
Which deals are real, which to drop, and a weekly review that runs without you in the room.
A predictable forecast
A forecast built from the deals that are real, and clarity around the actions required to deliver the number.
The three foundations of predictable sales
Ways I can work with you
Fractional CSO
A repeatable sales process, built and run with your team until it sticks.
Board level commercial adviser
Clear, experienced challenge on revenue decisions at the board table.
Project
A focused piece of work, from understanding how you sell to improving the part that matters most.
Book a conversation
Take the self assessment
For B2B businesses turning over roughly £5m to £50m. Based in Derby, working with businesses across the UK and beyond.
The Problem
Some months your revenue is strong and some months it's thin, and nobody can quite say why. You can't tell whether next quarter's number is safe, so every decision to hire, spend or grow feels like a gamble. Or the business is growing so fast that you're starting to wonder whether the way you sell can carry the weight.
Common reasons behind unpredictable revenue
Which of your deals are definite, which are possible, and which are a wishcast?
When quarter end comes around, the number on the board usually depends on who had a good week.
Your forecast, deal by deal
Definitewill close
Possiblemight close
Wishcasthoping it closes
Nobody actually knows how much pipeline is enough.
You hold £2M against a £1M target and assume you're safe, but without your real win rates, you're guessing.
No decision is the competitor nobody tracks.
Buyers get cold feet and decide that doing nothing is safer.
Your deals rely on one person at the customer.
If your contact leaves or gets overruled, months of work vanish with them.
The relationships you've invested so much time and money in sit with one person.
When revenue lives in one person's head and diary, momentum stops the second they get busy, or worse, leave.
Sales Maturity Self-Assessment
Sales Maturity Self-Assessment
See for yourself how mature your sales process is, and which areas to look at first.
Illustration
Thirty questions, six areas:
- Forecasting
- Your systems
- Your process
- Your commercial foundations
- Where you sit in your market
- Pricing
You end up with one picture of how your business sells, with the strong areas and the weak areas laid out plainly. It gives us something solid to anchor our conversation around, and it's yours to keep.
Allow up to half an hour. The more comments you add as you go, the more useful the picture will be. You keep the result whether or not we ever talk.
If you'd rather talk it through, I'm happy to do that with you.
From my LinkedIn
On keeping it simple
I've massively overcooked this.
I help founders of growing B2B businesses find out why their sales are unpredictable, and then I help fix it. That's it.
Read on LinkedIn → On pipelineZombie deals.
If a deal's close date has been pushed twice and nothing new has happened in 30 days, take it out of the active pipeline.
Read on LinkedIn → On forecastingForecast or Wishcast?
Rep optimism is great for selling, but it's dangerous for forecasting. Two practical questions to separate pipeline truth from wishful thinking.
Read on LinkedIn →
Nick Riggott
ARC Advisory
About Me
I've spent over 20 years in B2B sales. I've been responsible for my own number, a team number, and a regional business number.
So I've been on both sides of the forecast call. I've been under pressure to bring my own deals in, and under pressure to give the business a forecast it could rely on.
Most of those years have been in B2B technology. 11 years at Mitel, including running the UK and Ireland sales business: selling direct to enterprise and public sector customers, building the route to market through channel partners, and leading teams through three acquisitions. Before that, telecoms and IT services.
What I've seen is that unpredictable sales is rarely down to people not working hard. The factors vary business by business, but the same patterns show up in every organisation I speak to, whether it's people meaning different things by a qualified deal, or nobody knowing how much pipeline is enough.
Talented people, a positive culture and strong customer relationships are incredibly valuable. But they need to sit on a repeatable, predictable sales process that everyone in the business understands. I'd like to understand how that works in your business, and help you build it.
Get in touch
If you'd like to talk about your sales, I'd like to hear about it.
Book a time that suits you, or call or email me directly. We'll start with how your sales work today.